The Census Bureau reports Hispanic population at the zip code level (actually zip code Tabulation Areas). They also offer granularity about Hispanics in measured areas such as, in this case, the percent of the population who are Cuban in background. So I proceeded to find the top ten proportionately Cuban zip codes in Miami-Dade County according to the Census. The logic is that the closer to 100% Cubans represent in an area, the more pure of a read we’ll get as to how Cubans voted.

I then obtained a list of Miami-Dade County’s precincts from the Elections Department and isolated the ones located in the 10 Cuban zip codes; there are 111 of them.

When aggregated, Mitt Romney won these 111 precincts 58.5% to 41%. This is in a county Obama won 67.6% to 37.9%.

According to the Census, the population of these 10 zip codes is 92% Hispanic and 70.4% Cuban Hispanics. It can be easily argued that non-Cuban Hispanics brought down Mitt Romney’s numbers in these precincts, since non-Cubans statewide (and nationwide for that matter) went for Obama in a big way. We can deduce therefore that 58.5% is a floor or the minimum amount of support that Romney got from Cubans in these zip codes.

Note that there are precincts in Miami-Dade (with significant numbers of registered voters), such as precinct 390 in the very Cuban Miami Lakes area, that went as high as 74% voting for Romney. Without doing an extraordinary amount of math, one can see that true Cuban support for Romney probably was somewhere in the mid to low 60s, a clear win for the Republican but somewhat less than other GOP candidates in the past. I did a similar analysis four years ago and estimated McCain’s support to be just shy of 70% among Cuban-Americans.

Then there’s the work of real political scientists like Dr. Dario Moreno and Dr. Kevin Hill of Florida International University. They conducted “an ecological regression of large Cuban precincts in Miami-Dade County and found that the Cuban-Americans voted for Romney 58% to 42%. This is very close to my “floor” for Romney.

So the news appears mixed. Clearly Romney won among Cuban-Americans, but apparently with a less dominating margin than previous GOP candidates. The deterioration of support probably wasn’t enough to make a difference in Florida, but should be troubling to the Republican Party.

Romney campaigned hard in south Florida, but I don’t think he ever connected well with many Cuban voters. In 2007 he made an embarrassing gaffe while addressing Cuban-Americans, inadvertently using a communist slogan favored by Fidel. Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, was also once opposed to the embargo based on a libertarian argument that free trade frees people (an argument that Cubans might agree with, except for the fact that they know trade with Cuba is not free since the government dominates 90% of the economy in that country). Add Romney’s ground game troubles, and perhaps we can explain some of the fall-off.

Can Florida Cubans return to previous levels of support for GOP presidential candidates? I think so, particularly if Marco Rubio is at the top of ticket. In the same 111 precincts in which Romney obtained 58.5% of the vote, Rubio got 65% in his 2010 Senate run.

17 Comments, 12 Threads

1.
General Tso

What is the argument here? That Romney may have, if we are highly credulous of the author’s argument, cleared 50% of the Cuban vote? How frightening is that?

There is no question that this election marked a dramatic decline in the R take of the Cuban vote, as measured at the Presidential level or at any other level in which there wasn’t a Cubano running vs. a non-Cubano.

Yes, we could have Rubio. Then he could continue on the path he took the moment he rose to House chief in Florida: refusing to pass any of the immigration legislation he’d been given a mandate to pass, while being heaped with praise as the national conservative media’s great Hispanic hope, you know: articulate clean cut.

Realpolitck? We hang our hopes on someone based on their identity, violating our alleged principles along the way, and we just go down faster, not slower.

You do have a point about Rubio and this popularion. But Cubans make up what percent of the Hispanic vote? They are a special interest group, albeit one with a very important message about collectivism’s threat. And he’s given many indications of being less than trustworthy in his allegiances.

In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I’d run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. — Lee Kwan Yew

Published on Oct 26, 2012 This whiteboard animation shows what happened when Hitler lied to get elected and people don’t care or pay attention to the lies of their leaders, until they do care…and at that point, it is too late. Parts of this video are narrated by a man who served as a German soldier and a German woman who lived right by the railroad tracks the cattle trains ran on that carried the Jews to their deaths.

In personality types, there are “external” types who believe that OTHERS control their fate & “internal” types, which believe the they themselves control their own fate. America was founded by anglo-saxons, who are “Internals” & believe that they themselves control their own fate, which is UNTRUE of most OTHERS in the entire world. For instance, ALL hispanics tend to be External & look for OTHERS to take care of them. However, Cubans, JUST LIKE ANGLO-SAXONS, ARE ALSO “INTERNALS,” who believe that they CONTROL THEIR OWN DESTINY. That’s FACT YOU KNOW? Just saying…what is, is…

Sadly Americans once again were forced to select a Republican based on taking the “lesser of the 2 evils” syndrome. We really didn’t have the best choices and that showed at election time. Republicans have to find better people. We need another Ronald Reagan type of candidate. We need a candidate that knows the answer before the commentator finishes the question. We need for the Republican Party to really get out there and show the young, dumbed down youth voter that Obama and Democrats like him aren’t the best thing for America. We, as a party have let them, as well as ourselves, down with the choices we’ve been making. The Hispanic vote is important and having conservative Hispanic Republicans is important for our party and the future of our country.

This article is highly irrelevant and only dwells on a defeat that anybody, except the author and the conservative media and analysts, could see coming. And they did not see it coming not because numbers lied or polls were skewed but because of the blinders with which they wanted to see things. Extreme conservatives cannot see anything good if it came from Obama’s administration, just like they cannot see any disconnect between Romney, his views and the views of their party with the general, growing, population of this country. A group that does not want to be governed by religious leaders that put their God before anybody else’s and that want to impose law based on what they consider to be the moral and “righteous” right, disregarding the views of others who don’t agree with them. America was built by our forefathers in a completely different era. Holding on to their beliefs and “values” and wanting to go back to that era is ridiculous and does not gel with today’s generations. Those values worked back then and have a lot to be rescued from, but they cannot be taken literally and applied to today’s world. Until Republicans realize that and make changes to their way of approaching the non-old-white-male population, they will continue to lose elections. And not even those so-called conservative Cuban Americans that the author regards as “oh-so-important” in the elections, will be able to make a difference in the outcome. Times, they are changing and if you don’t adapt, you are out of the race. That’s the bottom line.

Lol, another right-wing kook trying to spin the facts in his favor. Henry, your guy lost, fat boy. Get over it and move on with your sad life. And yes, Cubn-Americans did support Obama this year, the main reason being the lifting of the travel and remittance restrictions to Cuba. Don’t believe it? Go to Miami International Airport and check out all the packed flights to Havana. Times have changed. Deal with it.

It should not be surprising that the children of treachery should continue in the ways of their ancestors. The corporation known as the United States of American has strangualted the Cuban economy to the point of near starvation because Castro refuses to bow down and serve Mammon!

Nevertheless, his caring and compassionate socialism has given his people higher levels of literacy and health outcomes than in the greedy, exploitive USA.

The Cuban immigrants in Miami are simply greedy overlords who brtualized and repressed Cubans during the Batista regime. They escaped from Cuba with their ill-gotten billions and sought refuge from greedy imperialsists in the United States. They are traitors who robbed their own country blind and ran like cowards when a new leader arose who demanded justice!